Day 2
Saturday 13th May - Cadderlie to Glen Dochard
I went up to the bothy last night to see if there were any further arrivals but found only Brian, Tony and the girl friend Sylvia. I was right about the stories and could only stand 30 minutes. it appears that between the two of them they are responsible for repairing every bothy in Scotland. They also mentioned they were using 1:25000 maps to navigate to Kinghouse Hotel, when I said they must have a lot of maps for the whole trip the reply was they only used 1:25000 for the difficult bits!
I was up and away by 6am. It must have been very cold in the night because the tent was covered in frost, it was still very cold so I walked the first 3km in trekkies and a fleece but by 7am it was warm enough to strip off and I had a pleasant walk through the deciduous woodland by the loch side. I stopped at 9am for tea and arrived and the end of the loch by ten. I had passed a full size wig-wam by the road side, not the sort of thing you would want in your pack.
I phoned Avril from the box at Druimachoish House and then crossed the bridge over the River Etive and spent the three hours after lunch walking up Glen Ceitlein, very hard going towards the bealach in a cold wind and snow showers. I had to shelter behind some rocks for a tea break and then was forced to carry on as there were no suitable camp sites until I passed over the bealach and dropped a couple of hundred metres into Glen Dochard. When I put the tent up there were several wood ants inside, I must have packed them when I struck camp last night. I had thought the pack was heavy climbing up the valley.
I am now lying in the tent while writing this. A few minutes ago I heard a rumble and thought a jet was flying over but when I looked out I saw a few hundred tons of snow and rocks falling off the valley side opposite into the river, fortunately it did not reach me. It is now 6pm and it is snowing again and this time it really means it!
